Hershey’s Trip Part 1

In early December, I had the opportunity to travel to Hershey, PA for a blogger trip. You may remember the giveaway I hosted as part of the trip. Well I didn’t get around to a recap because once I got back from the trip, it was crunch time for the holidays and the new year. I finally just recently downloaded the pictures from my camera, got all my chocolate goodies put away, and sat down to write up the trip. I’m going to be featuring different aspects of the trip over a couple different posts. So hang in there!

After a bumpy turbo-prop flight from Boston, I landed at the airport and there was a driver waiting for me. I was pretty shocked at how tiny the airport was! A driver picked me up and we were off to the sweetest place on earth. My flight got in early enough that I had time to go check into my room and relax a bit before meeting up with the other bloggers.

The accomodations were amazing! Hershey’s put all of the bloggers up in the Woodside Cottages at The Hotel Hershey. They were cute cottages that had a great room that everyone had access to and then we each had our own bedroom and bathroom. So we had two keys to keep track of, but that was ok. The great room had a mini fridge, a big table, couch, TV, and fireplace. The rooms were amazing too. I had two queen size beds, a desk, TV and a HUGE bathroom with a double sink, shower, toilet, and soaking tub. Each room also had a door that went directly outside with a little porch area.

Once I threw my stuff down, I started nibbling on the chocolate bar they gave me when I checked in (I went with dark as opposed to milk chocolate) and digging through my swag bag. I was excited to find all kinds of goodies in there including a branded Flip camcorder!

After a late lunch, we headed over to Chocolate World! I have really enjoyed meeting a variety of bloggers over the past year and it was really interesting to meet some non-food bloggers. In fact, there were only two of us who called ourselves food bloggers. Fellow baker, Anna, from Cookie Madness (who I had met in NYC earlier in the year) and myself. That was it. Naomi from Bakers Royale was supposed to be there but she had a job interview come up at the last minute. I would have loved to meet her too!

Once we arrived at Chocolate World, we were introduced to the Hershey’s team who put the trip together for us. We started with the Chocolate Tour Ride where we learned all about how chocolate is made at Hershey’s.

We got to see the Really Big 3D Show that was actually really neat. I swear I had to sit on my hands not to reach up to grab the Hershey Kisses that looked like they were dropping from the sky!

And of course, we got to make our own chocolate bars. It was a lot of fun choosing the mix-ins and then designing our own labels for our candy bars. Once all the design work was done on the computer, you got to see your candy bar going through the various stations.

I chose a dark chocolate base (obviously), and pretzel sticks, chocolate cookie pieces, and butter toffee crunch for my fill-ins. I opted not to get festive sprinkles on mine, although they were really cute.

I was bummed that when my candy bar made it to the pretzel station, only four little pretzels came out! I love the salty-sweet combo so I definitely missed those pretzels when I bit into the candy bar later.

Speaking of later, here is a picture of my candy bar after I got it back to Boston and cut it open. The candy bar was huge! It was about the size of a normal Hershey’s bar but really thick. It was very chocolatey!

We also got to try some new products (which they sent home with us as well). I loved the tiny Reeces peanut butter cups. I see some peanut butter cup brownies in my future!

After a long afternoon at the Chocolate World, we headed over to Harvest for dinner. I didn’t take any pictures the rest of the night, but I had an amazing Dark Chocolate Braised Pork Shank. The entire meal was amazing, and we got to meet the head of PR for the Hotel that night as well. I sat next to some awesome bloggers who do product reviews for moms.

Overall the first day at Hershey’s was amazing and chocolate filled. After a long day, I took advantage of the huge soaking tub and enjoyed an hour long chocolate bubble bath. Stay tuned for a recap of day two at Hershey’s coming up next week!

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I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. (more)

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